Is the Linux desktop becoming extinct?

After a decade of looking for the "year of the Linux desktop", many Linux columnists have given up. Some say it isn't coming, while others claim that Linux has simply failed on the desktop.

If we responded to everyone who has ever criticised the Linux desktop, we wouldn't get any work done. But Miguel de Icaza isn't just anybody. He's well respected in the open source community as the founding developer of one of the two main Linux desktop environments, the Gnome desktop. To our utter amazement, even he now thinks the Linux desktop is dead!

The history of Linux: how time has shaped the penguin

In a recent post on his personal blog, Icaza shares his reasons why Linux couldn't pitch itself as a viable consumer desktop operating system. His comments are a follow-up to a Wired article that claimed that Apple OS X has far outpaced the Linux desktop. In the post, titled "What killed the Linux desktop?" Icaza, from his experience with Gnome, collates the various reasons for the Linux desktop's dire predicament.

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Announcing “e Foundation” for eelo

I’m pleased to announce that a non-profit organization has been incorporated to support the project: e Foundation.
“e Foundation” will host core eelo assets and fuel the development of eelo software.
This non-profit organization will be able to receive private and public grants, as well as donations from individuals, from anywhere in the world. We’re also working to add a legal way so that donations could benefit from tax cuts, as it’s often possible when donating to “in the public interest” organizations.
As soon as a bank account will be ready for “e Foundation”, we will move there all donations and our “in demand” crowdfunding campaign.

RIP Robin "Roblimo" Miller

Linux Journal has learned fellow journalist and long-time voice of the Linux community Robin "Roblimo" Miller has passed away. Miller was perhaps best known by the community for his roll as Editor in Chief of Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned Slashdot, SourceForge.net, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, and ThinkGeek from 2000 to 2008. He went on to write and do video interviews for FOSS Force, penned articles for several publications, and authored three books, The Online Rules of Successful Companies, Point & Click Linux!, and Point & Click OpenOffice.org, all published by Prentice Hall.

The open source, Linux based “AsteroidOS” alternative to Wear OS arrives in a stable 1.0 release, and Block spins off some of its Android smartwatch stack as an open source OpenWatch Project.
The AsteroidOS project has released version 1.0 of its open source, Linux-based smartwatch distribution. Designed for after-market installation on “Wear OS by Google” (formerly Android Wear) watches, AsteroidOS can now be dual booted on seven different models. The release follows the late March announcement of an OpenWatch Project for building Android based open source custom ROMs on Wear OS watches.

Purism has published their nearly final specifications on their limited-run Librem 5 Dev Kit. The cutoff for ordering a developer kit is next week as they are placing their hardware order and planning on only this single, limited run of the developer kit prior to the phones becoming available next year.
Their deadline for ordering a developer kit is the end of the month and the kit price has raised to $399 USD. In the process, Purism believes they are still on track for their January 2019 for coming up with having the phone's actual hardware ready.